Rice Machinery and Windmills in Siam.

Progress, Volume I, Issue 5, 1 March 1906, Page 115

Rice Machinery and Windmills in Siam.

Of late years the cultivation of rice has been extending m several countries outside the Celestial Empire, notably in Siam and Indo-Chma, and with the increasing area of land being put under this cereal there is a growing scarcity of manual labour as well as of draught animals, the number of which is undergoing a steady diminution. According to the French Consul m Bangkok, the difficulties represented by the shortness of the labour supply in Siam are so serious that in the absence of sufficient immigration of Chinese coolies the only way of properly cultivating and preparing rice is by the employment of suitable machinery, although he admits that so far as the tilling of the land is concerned, the soft clayey nature of the soil offers many difficulties. Nevertheless, he is convinced that these could be overcome by engineers who would be prepared to spend a year m Siam in view of studying the means of adapting machinery to the various processes at present performed by hand, and- he holds out excellent hopes for manufacturers of such mechanism, who would find an equally large market in Indo-China and other countries in the Far East. There is also a large opening for windmills in the Menam Valley, as well as m Cochin China, Cambodia, and Tonkin, where the vast wind swept plains are specially favourable to the employment of such appliances. No serious efforts have yet been made to introduce wind-mills the growers apparently being disposed to wait for the carrying out of certain irrigation works which will take several years to complete ; but if manu-

facturers of windmills could induce a number of growers to purchase a single wind engine for experimental purposes there is no doubt that its advantages would be quickly appreciated, alike for the irrigation of the rice fields during the dry season, and at other times for driving rice thrashing decorticating, and other mechanism. In the opinion of the French Consul there is much to be done by those agricultural engineering firms who will take a close and intelligent interest in the requirements of rice-growers in the Far East.